Conventionally, a plurality of facility equipment such as air conditioning supply air vents, lighting fixtures, and the like have been installed within large indoor spaces of buildings such as office buildings. The placements of the facility equipment are determined without regard to the intentions of the residents, prior to the residents determining the interior layout. These facility equipment are designed so that they can be grouped as appropriate, and turned ON/OFF separately for each separate zone.
Because the facility equipment are operated by the zone unit in this way, even if there were areas without any people within a particular zone, it would still not be possible to turn the air conditioning or the lighting OFF in that area, resulting in wasted energy. Given this, a technology has been proposed that makes it possible to adjust the lighting individually using a light-adjusting sensor device installed in the lighting fixture (See Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication 2007-12331 (“JP '331”)). The technology disclosed in this JP '331 is one wherein lighting adjustment is controlled individually for each lighting fixture in accordance with the presence or absence of people and in accordance with the ambient lighting, through the provision of human presence sensors and illumination sensors in the light adjusting sensor equipment.
The design wherein the facility equipment are grouped appropriately is performed prior to the resident determining the interior layout, and thus is not likely to take into account convenience at the time of actual use.
The facility equipment are different from furnishings such as a desk or a chair that can be rearranged by the residents, but rather are secured to the ceiling or to the wall so cannot be rearranged at will after the interior layout has been established or modified.
The facility equipment are different from furnishings that can dedicated exclusively to the personal use of a resident, such as a desk or a chair, but rather are shared by a plurality of residents within the scope of the zone wherein there is grouping as appropriate, and thus it has not been possible to achieve an optimal state of use depending on the presence or absence of a resident.
Given the constraints, above, it is difficult to minimize the energy used while achieving the required indoor environment.
For example, when a grouping zone is actually designed to be shared by 10 people, where, in a zone, the lighting fixtures comprise eight lights, six air-conditioning vents are provided, and the lighting fixtures and the air conditioner vents are controlled as groups, even if there were only a single individual in the zone, due to some set of circumstances, still it would be necessary to maintain the indoor environment using the same amount of energy as if there were 10 people present. That is, for the lighting, all of the eight lights would be turned ON, consuming much more energy than is required for a single individual.
Moreover, as illustrated in the plan view in FIG. 15, for example, one may consider the provision of a large number of facility equipment 201 within the space 200 and dividing the space 200 into a plurality of zones 202 through 206. However, when a reception desk 207 is disposed so as to bridge across zones 202 and 203, then en if one wished to turn OFF the facility equipment 201 positioned at the reception desk 207, if there are people at the positions of 208 and 209, then the facility equipment 201 in zone 202 and zone 203 could not be turned off.
When designed from the start so as to be able to make the units smaller by partitioning to the degree that is possible for residents to use the facility equipment perfectly individually, then it is possible that the interior ends up partitioned with unnecessarily excessive fineness. Ultimately, this will result in the drawbacks that the usage decisions will be overly complex, and the equipment cost will be unnecessarily high.
Additionally, attempting to make the grouping units smaller after the fact would require changes in wiring, replacing equipment entirely, and the like, so the equipment renovation costs would be large.
In the technology disclosed in JP '331, lighting adjustment sensor devices 212 are provided on the individual lighting fixtures within the space 210, as illustrated in the plan view in FIG. 16, to enable the lighting adjustments of the lighting fixtures 211 to be controlled individually. However, in the technology disclosed in JP '331, it is assumed that the lighting adjustment sensor devices 212 are installed in every one of the lighting fixtures 211, and thus there is a problem in that this increases the equipment costs. Moreover, because the interior is partitioned for each of the lighting fixtures 211, there is a problem in that there is unnecessarily excessive partitioning within the interior. Furthermore, in the technology disclosed in JP '331 there is a problem in that the lighting adjustment sensor device 212 must be removed from the lighting fixture 211 and reinstalled when one wishes to change the operating mode.
The present invention is to solve the problem areas set forth above, and the object thereof is to provide an operation controlling system, and an operation controlling device and method, able not only to take into account the convenience of use when actually used after the interior layout has been determined by the resident, but also to enable the control of energy consumption.